Despite hope for peace, we’re looking at a tray of 'Cocktails from Hell,' to use the title of Austin Bay’s new book on the dangerous state of the world.

I remember the good old days, 20 years ago. The Cold War was over, the “peace dividend” was spent, the tech bubble was inflating, and we partied like it was 1999. The future was going to be a bright, peaceful, high-tech wonder as liberal, democratic bourgeois values won out around the world.

I miss that future, since what we got was something else entirely. And now, 20 years later, instead of partying like it’s 1999, we’re looking at a tray of "Cocktails from Hell," to use the title of Austin Bay’s new book on the dangerous state of the world. Personally, I’d rather have a Harvey Wallbanger.

But since no one will take away these cups that are set before us, here are some of the things that Austin Bay is worried about, and that the rest of us should pay attention to.

Korea is one of several “frozen conflicts” since World War II. The war was stopped, but not actually ended, by an armistice in 1953. For more than half a century, North Korean forces faced South Korean and allied troops, including a lot of Americans, across the “demilitarized zone,” or DMZ. Every once in a while, North Korea would sink a ship, or shoot down a plane, as part of an effort to assert its importance. Meanwhile, despite a failed nuclear agreement from the Clinton era, it proceeded to develop nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles.

North Korea’s assertiveness — and a newly aggressive People’s Republic of China — has caused its neighbors to arm up. Economically, South Korea is a powerhouse far outstripping North Korea’s socialist poverty, but this is offset somewhat by North Korea’s huge army, which also features thousands of artillery tubes aimed at South Korea’s capital, Seoul, just across the border. Japan, meanwhile, is expanding its navy and converting some of its “helicopter destroyers” into, essentially, aircraft carriers capable of carrying the new F-35 fighters.

The Trump administration has waged a diplomatic offensive here, and there have been cheerful photos of North and South Koreans joining hands as fortifications along the DMZ are demolished. But North Korea still has nuclear and missile programs. Kim Jong Un could easily open up his nation and see his people’s wealth — and health, and nutrition — improve dramatically in short order. But Kim’s own power might not benefit.

There’s also the uncertainty of what China will do. China has liked having a buffer state between it and South Korea and Japan, and North Korea has given it a way to needle the West with some degree of deniability. On the other hand, a buffer state headed by a madman with nuclear missiles is less a buffer than a festering and risky problem.

China is awkward mix of great success and stress

Speaking of China, it’s a problem, too. Thanks in no small part to licit and illicit infusions of Western technology, China’s economy (and military potential) have exploded. But many of the changes are risky for its leadership.

As Bay puts it, “China is an awkward amalgamation of great success and enormous stress.”

It has gone from a nation where people literally starved in great numbers into a Great Power with global clout in the space of a couple of generations. But it suffers from enormous wealth inequality and tremendous corruption. As with North Korea, China’s increasing power — and in recent years, increasingly aggressive stance — has led its neighbors to arm up and to talk to each other. (It’s pushing the United States and India together, too).

Domestically, more than a million Muslims in Western China have been sent to reeducation camps, as China fears insurrection. The Maoist “one child” policy has seen the Han Chinese population lose ground against faster-breeding ethnic minorities.

The risk will be either that China succumbs to the hubris of a rising power (like Germany in 1914) and starts a war that will be disastrous, or that it starts a foreign war as a distraction in the face of internal conflict. Either could be ruinous for the region, and perhaps the world.

Russia, meanwhile, craves Great Power status but doesn’t really have it. This drives Vladimir Putin crazy. After running things like the Mafia for a couple of decades, Putin now wants to be more like a czar. This has led to adventurism in the Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, as well as pressure on Poland and the Baltics.

We have 'an extremely hazardous form of peace'

In Yemen, it’s Iran. The Iranians are exploiting civil war there to build up a power base that threatens Saudi Arabia, as well as shipments of oil and other important commodities through the Red Sea to the Suez Canal. (Just look at a map to see why).

Plus, Bay notes, “Yemen is the back door to petro-power Saudi Arabia, a regional and ethnic rival that the Iranian clerics despise.”

Iran’s presence in Yemen allows it to deniably attack shipping, launch missiles, etc. and blame it on Yemeni insurgents. The result has been enormous death and destruction, until recently largely under the news media radar.

Bay offers much more information about these and other hot spots and flashpoints around the world, including the motivations, allies and resources available to various parties, and some potential scenarios for the future. If I were teaching a class in international relations, I’d definitely assign "Cocktails from Hell," which is clear, concise and highly informative. But since I’m not teaching such a class, I’ll just reflect that things certainly didn’t turn out as we hoped, and mostly expected, back in the 1990s.

Compared with what people expected when I was a kid — basically, global thermonuclear war, sooner or later — things turned out pretty well, in spite of these toxic cocktails. Compared with the fizzy champagne of the 1990s tech-bubble era, things have turned out pretty badly. It’s easy to overstate risks, but it’s also easy to succumb to wishful thinking in order to ignore them.

Bay recounts how as the Cold War ended in the early 1990s, a woman told him, somewhat gleefully, that with war ending, he’d now have to find something else to write about. His reply: “Well, ma’am, it’s an extremely hazardous form of peace.”

It still is.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor and the author of "The New School: How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself," is a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors.